SERVICES
Every tier runs on the same CEP evaluation engine: the work that takes resume-screening hours, interview slots, and calendar weeks off your team's plate. The tiers differ in what Litmus takes care of beyond the evaluation. CEP delivers the evaluation. CEP Plus adds The Unpack Interview on demand: you nominate the candidates, regardless of where they land in the CEP ranking, and Litmus delivers a comprehensive report on each that catches overreach, exaggeration, and fabrication. Full Service adds end-to-end candidate engagement and deep evaluation across five criteria most processes miss: technical capability (the seat at the table), knowledge transfer, communication style, leadership skills, and environmental fit. Pick the tier on service shape.
TIER 1
End-to-end pipeline evaluation. The decision support system in its purest form: Litmus takes care of the evaluation, your team takes care of the hire.
FTE
5%
of first-year base salary
CONTRACT
$5,000
flat fee per requisition (CAD)
12 HIRES
ONE FLAT SAAS COMMITMENT
We placed Litmus on twelve high-volume technical requisitions across two quarters. The flat SaaS commitment held across every hire: no per-search invoicing, no contingency surprises, no end-of-quarter reconciliation calls. Our cost per hire was a real value proposition, and we were very satisfied. The platform paid for itself early and kept paying. We have renewed for a second term and added a second business unit.
ZERO QUESTIONS
PROCUREMENT REVIEW PASSED
The elimination matrix held up under procurement review. Every candidate, every reason, every piece of supporting evidence. Zero questions raised.
WHAT CEP DOES FOR YOU
CEP warrants the integrity of the evaluation, not the outcome of the hire. Your team takes care of the hiring decision and the candidate outcome.
TIER 2 · MOST POPULAR
The CEP evaluation, plus The Unpack Interview on demand. You tell us which candidates to unpack, regardless of where they land in the CEP ranking. One hour with each, spent on the work, tools, and technologies they claim. Trained recruiters using psychology, decades of interview design, and push-back to demand one thing: prove it. The principle is the safety of transparency. Candidates have permission to say "I don't know, I haven't actually worked with that." We find what they can do, what they cannot, and where they thrive. You get a comprehensive report on each candidate you nominated.
FTE
10%
of first-year base salary
CONTRACT
$10,000
flat fee per requisition (CAD)
WHAT CEP PLUS DOES FOR YOU
CEP Plus extends what Litmus takes care of to include The Unpack Interview. Your team still takes care of the hiring decision and the candidate outcome.
TIER 3
End-to-end candidate engagement with deep evaluation across five criteria. Technical capability is what gets the candidate a seat at the table. Knowledge transfer, communication style, leadership skills, and environmental fit determine whether the candidate actually succeeds once they are in the seat. CEP and CEP Plus evaluate technical capability deeply. Full Service inherits that and adds the four other criteria that conventional processes miss. Plus end-to-end candidate engagement: active sourcing, full pipeline management, offer negotiation, mid-engagement check-ins, and the 90-day replacement guarantee. The only tier where Litmus takes care of the candidate outcome.
FTE
20%
of first-year base salary
CONTRACT
18%
of contractor's hourly rate
THE FIVE EVALUATION CRITERIA
Most processes evaluate technical capability and stop there. Full Service evaluates the four dimensions that determine whether the candidate actually succeeds once they are in the seat. Technical capability earns the candidate the seat at the table. Knowledge transfer, communication style, leadership skills, and environmental fit earn the candidate the role.
FOUNDATION · INHERITED FROM CEP + CEP PLUS
Technical capability is what gets the candidate a seat at the table. Without it, nothing else matters. CEP scrutinizes role proximity, role drift, and evidence of work actually done. CEP Plus adds The Unpack Interview, which catches overreach, exaggeration, and outright fabrication through psychology, decades of interview design, and the structured push-back that demands a single output: prove it. Full Service inherits the entire technical evaluation stack of CEP and CEP Plus and proceeds from there.
ADDED IN FULL SERVICE
How has the candidate learned across their career, and how have they passed what they know to the people around them. Litmus tracks the learning trajectory through role transitions, mentor relationships, internal documentation written or commissioned, formal teaching engagements (lunch-and-learn series, workshops, university adjunct work, conference speaking), and the documented capability of teams led before and after the candidate's tenure. A candidate whose team's capability is materially higher when they leave than when they arrived is a knowledge-transfer signal. A candidate whose team flatlines or regresses behind them is also a signal, in the opposite direction. The deliverable: a documented assessment of how this candidate will affect the capability of the team they join.
ADDED IN FULL SERVICE
The candidate's natural communication mode under normal conditions and under change, mapped to the role's actual demand. Litmus evaluates which of the four operating modes the candidate runs by default, which modes they can shift into under pressure, and which the role requires. A change-agent candidate placed into a role that demands participatory consensus-building will struggle even if technically capable. A passive candidate placed into a leadership seat requiring change agency will struggle even more. The output: a communication-style profile keyed to the role, with honest commentary on where the candidate will need to stretch and where they will operate naturally.
ADDED IN FULL SERVICE
Not titles. Actual ability to adapt to change. Litmus evaluates how the candidate has been given more responsibility across their career and why (promoted because of demonstrated impact, or promoted because of tenure and availability), and above all, the candidate's track record under change. Change is the leadership crucible. The dimensions evaluated: changes in management (a new manager, a new VP, a new CEO); direction correction (the strategy you were executing turns out to have been the wrong one, how do you pivot); company-vision shifts (a product company that becomes a service company, or the reverse); scale transitions and acquisitions (a candidate who has worked through the transition from mid-size operator to integrator of acquired entities, with all the organizational re-shaping, redundant-function reconciliation, and cultural reconciliation that involves). The output: a leadership profile keyed to change adaptation, not to organizational-chart position.
ADDED IN FULL SERVICE
The candidate's capacity to cross the cultural divide between the environment they come from and the environment they are entering. Two organizations rarely look the same in their operating cadence, decision-making protocols, communication norms, or risk posture. A candidate from a high-velocity software shop, where time-to-market and always-on platform and application availability are the operating norm, carries a different working model than a candidate from a highly siloed bank, where decision authority cascades through formal committees and outage tolerance is measured in seconds and reputational consequence. Moving from one to the other is a culture shift, not a job change, and Litmus evaluates whether the candidate has the operating flexibility to thrive in the new environment. The evaluation runs in either direction: a banking-culture candidate placed into a software shop must learn to ship before perfect; a software-culture candidate placed into a bank must learn the protocol-driven decision flow without dismissing it as bureaucracy.
If a Full Service candidate leaves within 90 days of their start date for any reason other than company-initiated layoff, Litmus runs the search again at no additional fee. Applies only to Full Service. CEP and CEP Plus warrant the evaluation, not the candidate outcome.
PICKING THE RIGHT TIER
| Service component | CEP | CEP Plus | Full Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| CEP evaluation engine | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-candidate audit documentation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom interview plan per survivor | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Elimination matrix | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| The Unpack Interview (on demand, client-nominated) | − | ✓ | ✓ |
| Knowledge-transfer evaluation | − | − | ✓ |
| Communication-style evaluation | − | − | ✓ |
| Leadership-skills evaluation (adaptation to change) | − | − | ✓ |
| Environmental-fit evaluation | − | − | ✓ |
| Active sourcing | − | − | ✓ |
| Offer negotiation | − | − | ✓ |
| 90-day replacement guarantee | − | − | ✓ |
| FTE pricing | 5% | 10% | 20% |
| Contract pricing | $5,000 / req | $10,000 / req | 18% hourly |
Send the spec. We will recommend a tier based on the role, the engagement type, and what you want Litmus to take care of.